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New Battlestar Galactica Spin-off Series Announced
An anonymous reader writes "The Sci-Fi Channel's hit series Battlestar Galactica may soon be joined by a 50-year-prior prequel series, called Caprica. To be co-exec produced by Ron Moore and David Eick, the new series will follow the tale of the creation of the Cylons."
I'd turn up. More power to ya, Ron.
BG has gone from strength to strength. Who'd have thought it, for a remake of such a camp piece o'crap. I went in with EXCEEDINGLY low expectations. Maybe that's the secret.
Anyway, Ron can tell a story. I'll be there.
I am a leaf on the wind
I for one welcome our new Cylon Overlords.
The original series started back in 1954 and was called Paprika.
http://religiousfreaks.com/Don't we write stories from the beginning anymore?
What?
I'm not interested in a series whose name is an anagram of "I C A CRAP!"
I just really hope that this doesn't hurt the quality of BSG by spreading writing/producing talent as well as budgets too thin. I mean, I think Stargate might be suffering from that right now, having two complete series to do.
I also think that having a prequel could hurt a bit, because I feel like a strength of BSG is its unpredictability. I mean, it changes so much (season finale anyone?) that I feel that knowing the ending (Cylons created, rebel, we fight to a draw, Galactica survives to the present day, none of the Colonies get totally destroyed, etc) kind of hurts it.
...does anyone else think it might be a tad too early to start doing the prequels?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
You know adama wont die but thats about it.
Also regarding the prequel issue, lots of movies come about
world war II and are quite good despite people knowing
how world war II turned out they still seem to have good plots.
Boomer loves Chachi
Col. Tigh's Place
Laverne and Dualla
Caprica City 90210
A Different World
Law and Order: Special Cylon Unit
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I was hoping it would be ADAMA: The College Years.
Maybe in one episode, Adama has the sorority girls from Caprica Caprica Caprica over for a game of Strip Pyramid.
Will this one also feature the "edgy", trendy, subtly shaky camera work designed to give that "gritty, real-world" feel? Sheesh, it's overdone and hackneyed already. I think there's even software now that can take perfectly-filmed stuff and shakify it "for artistic effect".
So, after finally getting around to watching "Tooth and Claw" (Doctor Who 28x2), I am reminded of Gregg Easterbrook's discussion of (someone's, I forget whose) theory of the sci-fi "idiot plot," a plot which can only carry on forward motion if everyone involved is an idiot. BSG has been full of them, especially of late, with fantastic "should we ask him if he still has that bomb we know was ours yet is the only one unaccounted for? Naaaaaah."-related activities.
Why do I mention Doctor Who? Because it, quite simply, is not that. Star Trek (at least TNG) likewise rarely ran into this problem, so it's not just an american thing. But why do we buy into these plots? They're ridiculous on their face, yet we keep watching more sci-fi full of them. Are we that impressed by apocalyptic stories and high technology that we ignore the whole reason we're watching the show?
I just don't get it.
I'm not interested in a series whose name is an anagram of "I C A CRAP!"
That may be a valid point, but I can't trust any comments by One Butch Orgy.
There are only twelve types of BG spinoffs.
What is it with Hollywood's fascination with prequels anyway?
First there was Star Wars with Eps I-III, then there was Star Trek with Enterprise and the new proposed movie on when Kirk/Spock were in the Academy. And, now this.
I feel doing prequels is a bad idea and will never produce great entertainment.
There are three main reasons:
(1) Future is Known: Since the audience already knows what will happen to the characters in the future based on earlier movies, there is never that subconscious element of suprise. For example, no matter how much the main characters are in jeopardy, we know they will survive to justify their existence later in history. Writers basically paint themselves in a corner since they are bounded by the events that are supposed to come later.
(2) Risk to Established Canon: Sometimes the writers try to inject novelty by doing things that meses up the canon. They introduce things that no longer justifies what was established in the earlier movies. This leaves a bad taste in the audience's mouth because it invalidates everything they have come to believe. For example, the appearance of Borg on Star Trek Enterprise before the time of Kirk.
(3) Anachronistic Special Effects: Since prequels get made with special-effects technology that has evolved much beyond when the earlier movies were made, we end up seeing special effects and the general look of the movie not being in line with what we would expect how things would look in the past. For example, some of the consoles and user interface screens used by the cast in Star Trek Enterprise looked more advanced than the ones on Star Trek : DS9. This anachronistic anomaly again leaves a bad taste in the audience's mouths.
I feel Hollywood should abandon this fad of making prequels and just start making more novel sequels where what they can do is only limited by a good writer's imagination.
The article is rather scant on details, but includes this information:
I have mixed feelings about this spin-off. On the one hand, I have become more or less addicted to Battlestar Galactica and want something to tide me over until the third season starts. On the other hand, the plot of Caprica, as presented in this write-up, strikes me as cheesy. Is this a family feud? With billions of people in the twelve colonies, why does the Adama family need a central role in the new show? (Isn't one series enough? Was there a pre-William Adama back story in the original show or in Hatch's books? Being a BSG fan of only recent vintage, I don't know. This just reminds me of the 130-year McFly-Tannen conflict in Back to the Future.)
Battlestar Galactica is a riveting show. Hopefully its creators will achieve similar success with Caprica.
If it's anything like the "re-imagining" of this show, count me out. No idea why so many people fall for this show. The new BG is below par in just about every aspect of production....
Dad? I didn't know you read slashdot!
Why hello Dirk Benedict, I didn't know you had a Slashdot account.
Maybe so - but if we find out that Dr. Zee and the superior Cylons from Galactic 1980 are fighting a temporal cold war, I'm outta here. Aw hell, that'd even bring the original BSG and the Moore version into the same "continuity"...
I hear that Berman & Braga are looking for jobs now, after all, and Moore worked with Berman on DS9... [Shudder]
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
I'm most excited about meeting the first Cylon. In the series, the Cylons a sophisticated belief structure and a strange confidence in those beliefs (although we know they sometimes change their minds). We get to see a little of how Cylon society is structured in the second season, but there are a lot of unanswered questions. How did an artificial intelligence creat a monotheistic belief system? How did it come to believe anything at all? Why do Cylons believe they're God's chosen species?
In the director's commentary for the first-season episode "You Can't Go Home Again," Moore and Eick say that they think the key to a great BG episode is to give away secrets. There's a lot of secrets left.
Also in the works are a miniseries based on the book "Chariots of the Gods"
Oh, Puh-LEEZE!
I was a gullible little tweener dweeb when Chariots of the Gods? was a hot paperback. It didn't take long to see that it was a crock.
Now, it's an old crock. (Heck, the idea was getting kind of corny when the first Battlestar Galactica series cribbed from it for their background.) There are tons of SF books that Sci-Fi could be adapting that would have better name recognition.
You think that BSG is bad? Did you see the Lord of the Rings? Product placement all over the place! Pipeweed this, pipeweed that. Sheeesh! It's a good thing not that many people saw Lord of the Rings, or we might be facing a sequel.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
On the way I passed my boss, who had overheard the request. He gave me a nod, and directed me to Humor, where he'd shelved the von Daniken books. I do recall someone once complaining about the von Daniken's being in that section, Les's comment was we were a science library and they'd be shelved there or nowhere.
I really wish the Scifi Channel would stop with the psuedoscience-as-science bs, talking-from-the-dead scam, and big-bug-o-the-week movies, and get on with telling some really good SF: Strong stories with powerful ideas. Stargate et al is nice light comedy in the SF genre, but von Daniken presented as legitimate, well, give me a snarky G'aould any day.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Not exactly. Counting the (older) main characters out (Adama, Tigh, etc), there isn't really much to prevent the creators from simply saying, 'oh well X character managed to survive the Cylon attack and then simply hid underground until the end of season 2/beginning of season 3.' We already know there were resistance groups and you can simply caulk the 'well why didn't they re-establish contact with Adama earilier' question to poor communications and poor transporation.
(2) Risk to Established Canon
Again, theres already insanely huge gaps in terms of the series's backstory. Are there anymore hidden ammo dumps like the Ragnar Anchorage (from the mini-series), the Battlestar's history/how many were built (its hinted that there were initially over 100 prior to the outbreak of fighting), how/when did Gaius Baltar's become compromised (given the Cylon ability to age, he could've been compromised as a child for all we know), the list goes on.
(3) Anachronistic Special Effects
This is a can of worms. They could 'remain true' to the main series and keep everything low-tech, OR they could use the 'well the only reason why you didn't see things like cell phones was because the Galactica was so old and was supposed to be decommissioned that it was simply never stocked with them. OR when the fighting broke out they were simply scrapped/destroyed for parts/to make sure the Cylons didn't hack into them.'
Even if you don't nitpick, theres a ton of unanswered questions in the series ranging from the technical (if humans inititally created Cylons, how come they're so much more advanced in terms of tech?) to the basic ('technically' humans and Cylons were still at war prior to the entire series, why the hell wasn't the government acting its usual paranoid self and building nuclear bunkers everywhere like the U.S. did in the '50s?)
I actually read something in a magazine a few months ago, and basically the reason Sci-Fi does the monster of the week movies is because they're so low budget but still bring in advertising. They cost under a million dollars a piece to make, and they run them a few times and probably break even pretty fast. I guess that's basically the bread and butter of Sci-Fi, it's version of "reality TV".
..."Battlestar Pegasus". Basically a way to leapfrog back and forth and continue the story at a faster pace (or, they could split the ships up from time to time). But this might be interesting.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Women can make good pilots, biologically.
Of course, brute strength does provide you with some advantage, but I'm pretty sure withstanding G forces is more about power/mass ratio than absolute power. I've noticed that smaller people tend to have the advantage there as well.
I had trouble with Starbuck's character at first, but nowadays she's pretty believable. My suspension of disbelief as far as her piloting skills is not threatened, though in some of the last episodes of the second season I thought her responses and inner turmoil were a bit overplayed.
And as far as that ship being a soap opera. It seems pretty reasonable to me. I mean, there were love tetrahedrons in my college dorm, and that was on a much smaller scale without the looming threat of humanity's doom. And as Wally said on the Dilbert animated series, post-apocalyptic dystopias lower girls' standards by leaps and bounds.
As "Battlestar Galactica" is about a lot more than space battles, "Caprica" will be as much family drama as sci-fi tale.
It is just me, or isn't there enough family drama on TV? Why can't we have more Space Battles??? I mean with quad dual cores for less than the cost of a compact car and the effects shipping as presets in most 3D packages, why not a space battle every show? At least 50/50?
Hmm, maybe a Spacebattles.com channel?
I have never been able to bring myself to watch a single BSG episode. Aside from SG-1 modern dramatic sci-fi shows make me roll my eyes in disgust. I have no idea what a Caprica is, but I immediately thought of a combination of capsaicin (the spicy chemical compound found in chile peppers) and of course paprika (your mom's favorite chile pepper seasoning). This show sounds delicious! *sigh* Another hardcore fan only space ship drama. I'll eat later.
-tyfighter
Thinking back to the miniseries, the schematic the guy in the space station had for the cylons were the centurions we knew from the 1978 series.
Does this mean the new series will have to go back to men in suits to maintain that canon? Or will there be new CGI-tastic cylons that are supposedly created for more mundane tasks that humans origonally used them for?
i.e. this show will be set before the cylons split off and created the centurions?
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
"Bad casting choices, terrible acting,"
Terrible acting?! Bad casting choices?! Are you kidding or just being a mindless troll? This is one of the best elements of the show, bar none.
"cheesy sets,"
I hope you're not an Star Trek fan...
"barely acceptable lighting, "
"herky-jerky camera work, "
The camera work -- with its sudden pans and zooms -- tries to be realistic and convey the feeling of iminent attack. It feels just as the nervous cameras depicting the attack and fall of the Two Towers... It was a novelty back then and is still a very powerful instrument of dramatization...
"exceedingly shallow politically correct plotlines and characters,"
politically correct?! gimme i break, will ya! Boomer and cast are all but politically correct. Adama lies to the tripulation. There is a scientist with a moral dillema. There are alcoohol adicts... gimme a break!
"not to mention the barely concealed pro-USA anti-terrorism propaganda agenda in the writing."
while i agree the show depicts this "anti-terrorism propaganda agenda", i don't believe it's a weakness. In fact, it's one of its strong points.
In conclusion, i believe you're just trolling against what is one of the best shows -- SciFi or not -- to ever grace TV. If i had any moderation points left, your Insightful +5 would be history...
"If the original plan to do a continuation of the original series created by Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto [battlestargalactica.com] had gone forward, the show, and subsequent spin-offs probably would have been very watchable and entertaining."
yeah, Cylons would be mutants in a soap opera setting... gimme a break!
I don't feel like it...
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~mlindsey/asimov/question. htm (the story)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question (about the story)
Vuja De: That sinking feeling that this is going to happen again. Often occurs in meetings with Product Managers.
In an interview series composer Bear McCreary said:
So, for those of you who missed Galactica 1980, your chance will come! (a show so bad even SciFi Channel won't re-air it). It makes you wonder though, when they will turn up though.
BTW, for more amusing rants from old-school Galactica fans, check out Dirk Benedict's embarrassingly silly "Lost in Castration". But the best has got to be the utterly asinine open letter that some moderators wrote to Ron Moore a while back. Enjoy:
Back when I was a kid, there was a film called Planet of the Apes. Charlton Heston, you remember.
Well, I happened to get hold of the books, I forget how many there were but they had a lot more in there than the film(s). Basically, the story starts off with the astronauts crash landing on the planet of the apes, as does the film. But the plot continues throughout several books, until 3 of the chimps figure out how to fix the astronauts space ship and get back to earth in the 20th century. They are imprisoned for a while and the govt. ends up wanting to kill them off, especially when the female (Thira ?) gets pregnant by her mate Cornelius. They manage to escape (with the help of some friendly humans) and she has her child. The rest of the books are about the life of that child, and the gradual growth in the use of apes as human servants.
Eventually, they get pissed off with being servants, until one day Aldo (a gorilla) lets rip and kills his master, while shouting "NO !", the first words spoken by an ape on earth (the 3 chimps not withstanding). Riots ensue etc, etc. I forget now how the series ended, but I think it was leading up to the war that caused the nuclear war, that was in the far distant past for the Planet of the Apes. Nice and circular.
Anyway, you mentioned servants, so ...
Really, the episodes that have something to do with the main story are good (perhaps great), but the random episodes pretty much feel like "terrorist of the week" (you know, that thing we all hate Enterprise for, only substitute "alien" with "terrorist").
I think part of the craft of the writing of the show is the at-the-time-seemingly-random-event ("terrorist of the week") which several episodes later (or a whole season later) comes back up and reveals its tie-in to the main storyline. Best example: The nuclear warhead. Another strong example: The first episode with Zarek's rebellion definitely seemed like an isolated terrorist-of-the-week episode at the time, but it turns out those events were crucial to his involvement in the rest of the plot later, culminating in Baltar's election.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?